The Dice Man (49 page)

I had no desire to limit my dicelife by spending it all in prison so advanced planning was called for. Interrupting my work at the Catskill CETRE for a week I went on a `business trip' to New York. I discovered that Osterflood was living at his old apartment on the East Side about four blocks from where I used to live. Ah, the memories. He seemed to be working for a brokerage firm on Wall Street and was gone for nine hours each day. The first night I trailed him he went out to dinner, a movie, a discotheque and returned home alone and presumably read or watched television and then slept.

It's a rather interesting experience to spend an evening trailing a man you're planning to murder the next day; watching him yawn, become irritable when he can't find the right change for a newspaper, smile at some thought he's having. In general, Osterflood seemed rather nervous, I thought, tensed up - as if someone were trying to murder him.

I began to realize that murder is not as easy as it's cracked up to be. I couldn't loiter outside Osterflood's apartment a second consecutive night: my giant form was entirely too conspicuous. When and where to kill him? He was a big, muscular man, probably the only man on my original list of thirty-six that I wouldn't want to meet in a dark alley after I'd just fired a shot at him and missed I had brought my .38 revolver I still possessed from my pre-dice, suicideconsidering days, and I was pretty accurate at ten feet or less; I figured Big Frank would need a hole in the head to take him down. I also brought slang some strychnine to help along in that way should the opportunity arise.

My main problem was that if I killed him in his apartment I would have trouble escaping unnoticed. Gun shots in East Side apartments renting for four hundred dollars a month are not especially common. His apartment had a doorman, an elevator man, perhaps a hired security man, probably no stairwell. To shoot Osterflood in the street or in an alley was also dangerous since although gunshots were there much more frequent, nevertheless, people usually had enough curiosity to look over at what was happening. I was simply too big to be anonymous.

I suddenly realized that living in New York City, Frank Osterflood - and every other New Yorker - lived year after year without once, ever, being more than twenty feet from some other human being. Usually he was within ten feet of a dozen people. He had no private, isolated life in which he might be totally by himself and meditate and commune with himself and take stock and be murdered. I resented it deeply.

I couldn't afford to wait around; I wanted to hurry back to Catskill to continue developing the Catskill Dice Center, there to make people happy and joy-filled and free again.

Somehow I had to lure him away from the warren of Manhattan. But how? Was he interested in boys these days? Or girls? Or men? Or women? Or money? Or what? What was the hook that would drag him out of the cesspool of the city into the lovely, lonely autumn of the woods? How would I prevent his telling someone that he had seen me again, that he was going someplace with me? The only method that I could dimly see was to accost him as he returned from work, invite him to dinner and then lure him out of the city on some spontaneously combusted pretext and, on some isolated country road, miles from the nearest other human being communing with himself, shoot him. It seemed very messy and haphazard, and I was determined to commit a nice clean crime - without any sick emotions, without fuss, with dignity, grace and aesthetic bliss. I wanted to murder in such a way that Agatha Christie would be pleased and not offended. I wanted to commit a crime so perfect that no one would suspect anything, not the murdered, not the police, not even me.
Of course, such a crime would be impossible, so I retreated to my earlier ideal-that I should murder without fuss, emotion or violence arid with dignity, grace and aesthetic bliss. It was the very least I owed the victim.

But how! The Die only knows. I certainly couldn't see how. I would have to have faith. I would have to get myself with Osterflood and see what turned up. I'd never read of an Agatha Christie murderer proceeding in quite this way, but it was all I could do on twenty-four hours' notice.

`Frank, baby,' I said the next evening as he emerged from his taxi. `Long time, no see. It's your old buddy Lou Smith; you must remember me. Good to see you again.'

I pumped his hand as the taxi pulled away and, still hoping to prevent him from uttering my. name within earshot of the doorman, I threw my arm around his shoulder and whispered that we were being trailed and began marching him away.

`But Dr-'

`Had to see you. They're trying to get you,' I whispered as we moved up the block.

`But who's trying `Tell you all about it at dinner.'

He stopped about thirty feet from his apartment.

`Look, Dr. Rhinehart, I . . . I've got an important . . . appointment this evening. I'm sorry, but-'

I had hailed another taxi and it careered over to our curb lusting after our East Side money.

`Dinner first. Got to talk first. Someone's trying to murder you.'

`What?'

`Get in, quick.'

Inside the taxi I got my first good look at Frank Osterflood; he was a bit heavier about the jowls than he had been before and seemed more nervous and tense, but it might have been his concern about dying. His hair was nicely trimmed and brushed, his expensive suit fit flawlessly, and he gave off the pleasant odor of some heroic after-shave lotion. He looked like a highly successful, well-paid, socially placed thug.

'- To murder me?' he said, staring into my face is search of a jocular smile. I had glanced at my watch; it was six thirty-seven.

`I'm afraid so,' I said. `I learned from some of my dicepeople that they're planning to murder you.'

I stared sincerely into his face. `Maybe tonight even.'

`I don't understand,' he said, looking away. `And where are we going now?'

`Restaurant in Queens. Very good hors d'oeuvres.'

`But why? Who? What have I done?'

I shook my head slowly from side to side, while Osterflood stared nervously out at the passing traffic and seemed to flinch every time a car drew up alongside us.

`Ah, Frank, you don't have to hide things from me. You know you've done some things that . . . well, might upset some people. Someone, someone has found it's you. They plan to kill you. I'm here to help.'

He glanced back at me nervously.

`I don't need any help. I've got to go someplace at - at eight-thirty. Don't need help.'

Tight-jawed, he stared straight ahead at the somewhat un-artistic photograph of Antonio Rosco Fellini, driver of the cab.

`Ah, but you do, Frank. Your little appointment at eight-thirty may be your rendezvous with death. You'd better let me come along.'

`I don't understand,' he said. `Since dice therapy with you and Dr. Boyd I haven't, I haven't . . . done anything I haven't paid for.'

`Ahhhh,' I said vaguely, searching for my next line.

`Except my wife.'

`Where's this place again?' shouted back Antonio Rosco Fellini. I told him.

`And my wife has left me and is suing me and if I die she won't get a cent.'

`But those early days in Harlem, Frank. They may know.'

He hesitated and stared over at me wide-eyed in fear.

`But I'm leaving my money partly to the NAACP,' he said.

`Maybe they don't know that,' I said.

`Probably no one knows,' he said sadly. `I just recently decided.'

'Ah, and when did you decide?'

'Just now, a minute ago.'

We drove on in silence for a while, Osterflood twice looking mind us to see if we were being followed. He reported that we were.

`What's this appointment about tonight, Frank?'

'None of your business,' he answered quickly.

`Frank, I'm trying to help you. Someone may be trying to murder you tonight.'

He looked back at me uncertainly.

`I ... I've got a date,' he said.

`Ahhhh,' I said. `But it's a woman that I . . . that . . . she likes money.'

`Where are you to meet her?' 'In ... er ... Harlem.'

His eyes flickered off hopefully at a bus stopped beside us, as if it might contain a plainclothesman or CIA man or FBI man. There were undoubtedly a few of each, but they were out of his reach.

`Does she live alone?' I asked. It was six forty-eight.

`Uh . . . Well, yes.'

`What is she like?'

`She's disgusting!' he spit out emphatically. `Flesh, flesh, flesh - a woman,' he added.

'Ahh,' I said, disappointed. `Do you think there's any chance at all that she might be involved in a plot?'

`I've known her three months. She thinks I'm a professional wrestler. No. No. She's horrible, but she's not - it's not her.'

`Look,' I said impulsively. `Tonight the place for you to be is away from your apartment and out of public places. We'll have dinner in this out-of-the-way restaurant I know of and then we can all stay with this lady of yours.'

`Are you sure...?'

`if anyone is going to try to kill you tonight, you can depend on me.'

When Jake Ecstein was walking through a Dice Center one day he overheard a conversation between two people.

`Show me the best role you have,' said the first person.

`All my roles are the best,' replied the second. `You can't find in me any piece of behavior which isn't the best.'

`That's conceited,' said the first.

`That's diceliving,' replied the second.

At these words Jake Ecstein became enlightened.

from The Book of the Die

It occurred to me on my drive to Harlem with Frank Osterflood after our uneventful dinner at an obscure restaurant in Queens that I might try to `take him for a ride' to some dimly lit nowheres where mobsters drive to put other less successful mobsters away, but I didn't know any dimly lit nowheres, and besides, I was beginning to worry that Osterflood might turn his paranoiac tendencies toward me and attack.

We arrived at the apartment house of Osterflood's `date' at a little after eight thirty-four that evening. We seemed to be somewhere near Lenox Avenue on 143rd Street or 145th Street - I never did find out which. My victim paid the cabby, Who looked resentful at being stuck in the middle of no-man's land when he might be at the Hilton or Park Avenue. No one came close to us when we walked the thirty feet or so from the sidewalk to the door of the elegant and crumbling apartment building, although I sensed dozens of dark faces glaring at us in the deep dusk.

We clumped up the three flights of stairs together like a man and his shadow, I fingering my gun and Osterflood telling me to be careful of my footing. The sound of galloping horses and shouts came out of a first-floor apartment, highpitched hysterical female laughter from the second floor, but from the third, silence. As Osterflood knocked, I reminded him firmly that my name was Lou Smith. I was a fellow professional wrestler. The incongruity of two professional wrestlers showing up to court a lady, one of them dressed with Brooks Brothers immaculateness and the other like a down-and-out hood escaped me at the time.

The woman who came to the door was a middle-aged fat-lady with stringy hair, a double chin and jolly smile. She barely seemed a Negress.

`I'm Lou Smith, professional wrestler,' I said quickly, offering my hand.

`Good for you,' she said and walked out past us and waddled on down the stairs.

`Is Gina here?' Osterflood called after her, but she stomped on down unheeding.

I followed him inside, through a small entranceway and into a fairly large living room, dominated by a huge television set squatting against one wall directly opposite a long, Danish-modern couch. There was wall-to-wall carpeting, thick and soft and a pretty tan color, but badly spotted is front of the television set and the couch. The splash of running water came from a room off to the right, which, from the bulk of white I could make out, seemed to be a kitchen. Osterflood called in that direction `Gina?'

`Yeahhh,' came a high-pitched feminine voice.

While I was squinting at two photo portraits on one wall they looked, so help me, like Sugar Ray Robinson and Al Capone - the woman came to the living room and confronted us. She was a young, full-figured, dark-haired woman, with the face of a child. Big, brown eyes exuded innocence, and her dark complexion was flawlessly smooth.

`What's this?' she said shrilly and coldly in a voice that, while high-pitched like a child's, had a `what's-in-it-for-me?' cynicism that was totally incongruous with the child's face.

'Ah, this is Dr. Luke Rh-'

`SMITH!' I shouted, 'Lou Smith, professional wrestler.'

I advanced and stuck out a hand.

`Gina,' she said coldly; her hand was lifeless in mine.

She moved past us into the living room and said over her shoulder `You guys want a drink?'

We both asked for Scotch and while she was kneeling and then standing before an abundantly supplied liquor cabinet in the corner to the left of the television set, Osterflood and I sat down on opposite ends of the couch, he staring at the gray lifeless screen of the television set and I at the brown leather miniskirt and tan, creamy legs of Gina.

She came and handed each of us a nice stiff Scotch on the rocks, staring into my eyes with that same incongruous innocent child's face and saying coldly: `You want the same as him?'

I looked over at Osterflood, who was staring down at the rug. He seemed sullen.

`What do you mean?'

I asked, looking back up at her. She was wearing a tan, v-neck sweater that buttoned down the front and her breasts ballooned out at me distractingly.

`What are you here for?' she asked, not taking her eyes off me.

`I'm just an old friend,' I said. `Just here to watch.'

'That type,' she said. `Fifty bucks.'

'50 bucks?'

'You heard me.'

'I see. It must be quite a show: I looked back at Osterflood, he still stared at the subliminal floor show on the rug. `I'll need to think about it.'

`I'd like another drink,' Osterflood said and, head lowered, reached out his long, nicely tailored arm with his glass and two ice cubes.